What's New | Online Technologies

Why Chose Colocation with Online Technologies?

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:47:59 -0400

Online Technologies Provides the Environment, Security, Power, and Network to Ensure Always On, Always Online, and Always Secure

There’s certainly plenty to consider when developing a plan for you business’ data storage and disaster recovery. Building your own data center can be costly. Not storing your equipment in a safe, secure, and climate-controlled environment can be just as costly. The easy solution is colocation through one of Online Technologies’ Michigan data centers.

Colocation through one of Online Technologies Michigan data centers provides your business with the secure, controlled environment and reliable services to ensure your company’s computers are always on, always online, and your data is always safe. There are several factors that enable Online Technologies to provide these services. This blog post is dedicated to highlighting a few key points (environment, security, power, and network) that make Online Technologies the obvious choice when considering colocation for your company’s data.

Environment

Online Technologies’ data centers offer climate-controlled environments for colocation. Your equipment will be stored in one of Online Technologies data centers, offering more than 40,000 square feet of combined Michigan data center space. Each facility utilizes redundant N+1 HVAC systems providing a consistent climate (temperature and humidity).This system is under 24 x 7 monitoring, and OTC staff is immediately notified in the event of any changes to the environment. In addition, OTC’s data centers have two-level fire protection system and FM200 or dry pipe fire suppression systems.

Security

Colocation through OTC also ensures your equipment is safe and secure. OTC’s Michigan data centers require multiple levels of security clearance to gain access into the facility, including biometrics. The facility is monitored 24 x 7 by real-time video surveillance. Surveillance video is stored in an on-site DVR for 90-days. Online Technologies also offers optional locked, private cages, adding an additional level of security to your equipment and data. And as an Online Technologies customer, you will have 24 x 7 access to your colocated equipment.

Power

Online Technologies’ data centers offer always-on power. The 99.9-percent Uptime Service Level Agreement increases to 99.99-percent with the High Availability Package. The HA package is perfect for businesses that rely on e-commerce to generate their revenue. OTC can provide this because there are dual power runs from two separate power stations that supply OTC’s Michigan data centers with power. OTC data centers are also located on separate power grids in different geographic locations. This is an added benefit when disaster recovery hosting is placed in a different power grid.

Network

The network service replicates the power distribution. Dual network drops are provided from multiple Tier 1 providers with built-in failover. The 99.9-percent Uptime Service Level Agreement increases to 99.95-percent with the High Availability package. The network is proactively monitored 24 x 7. The network also provides private circuits between all of Online Technologies Michigan data centers. The network is scalable and burst-able, providing your company with the amount of bandwidth necessary to conduct your business.

For more information regarding colocation with Online Technologies, please contact our sales department at (734) 213-2020 or email sales@onlinetech.net.

White Pines Selects Online Technologies Corporation

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

SPINN Personal Health Records Hosted at OTC’s Newest Data Center

ANN ARBOR, MICH. - (June 9, 2008) – Online Technologies Corporation, a leading data center operator and managed services company, announces today the addition of White Pine Systems, LLC, an emerging provider of online Personal Health Records solutions, to its rapidly growing and diversified customer portfolio.

White Pine Systems’ flagship product, SPINN phr, the Secure Personal Information & Notification Network, is a market leading personal health record system designed to put consumers in control of their personal health information while making that critical information available any time, any place.

“As our population ages, more and more of us either suffer from a chronic medical condition, or are close to someone with such a condition,” said Doug Dormer, president and co-founder of White Pine Systems. “Having that information available is critical to our ability to lead active and fulfilling lives. Availability, security and reliability are absolute requirements for our customers.”

“We chose Online Technologies because of the company’s reputation for reliability and its responsiveness to customers in support of mission critical applications,” said Mr. Dormer. “We are thrilled to find such a world-class data center right here in Ann Arbor, our home town.”

Online Technologies will host the servers and provide managed services including data backup for White Pine’s SPINN Personal Health Record system out of its newest data center located at Avis Farms, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“We are honored to have White Pine Systems in our customer portfolio,” said Yan Ness, Online Technologies’ chief executive officer. “We have designed and built our business to provide the highest levels of service and support for mission critical solutions like SPINN. We know SPINN will be of tremendous value for the public, particularly for people dealing with chronic illness. We are pleased to be a part of this important solution.”

Online Technologies provides colocation, dedicated servers, and managed data center services for always-on computing applications. Online Technologies delivers the high reliability computing infrastructure so its clients can maximize their return by focusing on their high value applications and services.

Metromode Article Features Online Technologies

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:06:08 -0400

Article Highlights the Michigan Data Center's Growth

A recent article appearing in Metromode, a weekly e-magazine, highlights the opening of Online Technologies' new Avis data center and the companies' growth.

Click here to read the article.

About Online Technologies

Online Technologies is Michigan's Fort Knox for data and computing. Our secure, highly reliable Michigan data centers provide the infrastructure to ensure our clients' computers are always on; their data is always safe, and they are always connected to the Internet.

For more information on colocating with Online Technologies, please contact our Sales Department: sales@onlinetech.net

Online Technologies Announces New Customer Portal

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:38:24 -0400

Customer Portal has New Look, New Features

Online Technologies, a Michigan data center and managed service provider, announces a new customer portal. The new-look customer portal offers the same capabilities as before but with some new features.

More details to come...

High Availability Rack Design

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:02:14 -0400

Rack's Design Provides Redundancy for Always-on Power and Always-connected Internet

When businesses depend on the Internet to generate revenue and maximize profits, it is highly important their computers are always on and always connected to the Internet. Simply put, these are today's uptime standards. That is the benefit of Online Technologies’ High Availability (HA) rack. The high availability rack at Online Technologies, a Michigan data center and managed service provider, provides the redundancy to maintain always on and always connected computers. The design of the high availability rack is what provides this redundancy.

There are two particular design components that provide the necessary redundancy for the high availability rack: power distribution and network distribution.

Power for the high availability rack is distributed from two diverse power feeds. Each feed is fed through a UPS (Universal Power Supply), which cleans and distributes the power going to the high availability rack. Each PDU is connected to a pool of redundant batteries or an N+1 pool. The power to the HA rack is connected to two power strips. The entire power distribution also contains backup generators. In the event of a power failure, the PDU sends a signal to the generators to kick on and provide the necessary power to the HA rack.

Network connections to the high availability rack at Online Technologies offer the same redundancy as the power distribution. Two core routers are fed by multiple ISPs (Internet Service Providers). And each network feed is crossed between both routers and Online Technologies’’ network access switches. This provides two different points of network access. The network feed is then connected to two Universal Threat Management devices. These devices provide redundant firewall and denial of service, among other threat management applications. The network connections are then dispersed to all servers contained within the high availability rack through the network switches.

The benefit of this design is that it inherently creates no single point of failure for both power and network.

Businesses that rely on e-commerce cannot afford to be offline. A high availability rack through Online Technologies provides the peace-of-mind of knowing computers are always on and always connected to the Internet.

Online Technologies Opens New Michigan Data Center

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:46:34 -0400

New Site Provides Colocation and Dedicated Servers for Small and Mid-sized Businesses

ANN ARBOR, MI—Online Technologies Corporation announces the opening of its newest data center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The 10,500 square foot data center is located in Avis Farms, a technology park south of Ann Arbor. The Avis Data Center will house its growing colocation, dedicated server and managed service product lines sold to small and mid-sized businesses in Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

The new data center is designed for high availability applications that need to be always-on and always connected to the Internet. Customers can select redundant power and network options to their computer systems. Because the data center has dual power generators and redundant uninterruptable power supplies (UPS), there is no single point of failure in the power delivered to a customer’s equipment.

The network infrastructure offers similar high availability with two dedicated gigabit fiber connections between the Avis Data Center and Online Technologies’ other data centers in downtown Ann Arbor and Flint Township. The network has a redundant Cisco network architecture and is connected to multiple Tier1 Internet suppliers. Built-in failover across the network and Internet providers eliminates any single point of failure in the Internet delivery.

With the addition of its third corporate-owned data center, Online Technologies has a unique advantage with its multiple data centers dispersed across southeast Michigan. With a common network infrastructure, the three data centers are knit together into one “virtual data center.” This gives clients the ability to locate their primary data center in one of Online Technologies’ sites and their disaster recovery equipment in a separate data center separated by 50 miles and different power grids, yet function as if they were in the same data center.

“We take a long term view towards the data center market and see this as an ideal time to bring additional capacity online. The current economic environment provides us the opportunity to gain significant cost advantages through acquisitions that can last the next decade” said Bob Palmerton, Chief Financial Officer.

Online Technologies' operations include data centers in downtown Ann Arbor in Flint Township. With addition of the Avis Data Center, Online Technologies has grown from a single 800 square foot data center in 2003 to four data centers with a combined total of more than 40,000 square feet. OTC also leases data center space from a partner in Southfield for its clients requiring service closer to the Detroit area.

For more information, contact Online Technologies at 734-213-2020 or email at press@onlinetech.net.

Online Technologies Corporation (www.onlinetech.com) is Michigan’s Fort Knox for computing and data. Our secure, highly reliable data centers provide the infrastructure to ensure our clients' computers are always on; their data is always safe, and they are always connected to the Internet.

New Blog on Dedicated and Virtual Servers

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:19:16 -0400

Extending Blog to Cover Dedicated & Virtual ServersAfter serveral years of offering both colocation and dedicated servers, we've decided to add a separate blog to talk about the options that dedicated servers bring to the table.

And of course, we'll be talking about virtual servers in the shared data center environment as well.

More to come ...

New Michigan Data Center

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:14:27 -0400

South Ann Arbor Data Center OpenOnline Technologies Corporation is up and running in thier new data center in Avis Farms, south of Ann Arbor.

The Avis Farms Data Center was acquired in late 2007 and went operational at the end of the first quarter in 2008. The 10,500 square foot data center is the third data center in Southeast Michigan for Online Technologies.

All three data centers are connected with gigabit dedicated fiber between each data center - providing a back-up route and automatic failover for any network path between data centers and to Online Technologies multiple Tier 1 Internet providers.

Managed Data Center Services

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:03:21 -0400

Not all Michigan data centers are the sameThere are a wide variety of data centers in Michigan.

On the low end, all you get is "ping, power, and pipe" (ping = Internet connection, power = power delivered to you server, pipe = network drop). At this low end, your colocation equipment might be put into a data center with a telco grade floor, adequate cooling, but no SLA at all on the power or Internet delivery. These low end providers leave you on your own - no firewall, no back-up, no threat management, no high availability (HA) options, and no monitoring or hands & eyes service.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can get colocation with full managed data center services. Higher end factilities, N+1 redundancy on the power and cooling infrastructure, and high end security with dual authentication and DVR recorded security cameras. The network is protected with a high availability firewall, and managed services are available on a 24 x 7 basis to provide hands & eyes and technical expertise and services to make it easy to offload the day-to-day management of your data center infrastructure.

At Online Technologies, we're positioned to play at the higher end of the data center spectrum at realistic prices. Three high end data centers across Southeast Michigan, with managed data center services that include universal network threat management, 3 level server monitoring (network, performance, and end user), managed back-ups & archiving, remote network storage, rapid recovery options, hands & eyes support, ...

High Availability & Disaster Recovery

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:17:18 -0400

Reviving Our Blog on High Availability & Disaster RecoveryAfter spending our time building our data center business, we're back to blogging. Plan to start writing more on high availability data center architectures and disaster recovery.

More to come ...

Online Technologies Adds New President to Its Executive Team

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Michigan Colocation Data Center Company Continues High Growth

Ann Arbor, MI—May 8, 2008—Online Technologies Corporation announced today the appointment of Mike Klein as President and Chief Operating Officer. In this newly created position, Mr. Klein will be responsible for strategic partnerships, commercial activities and managing day-to-day operations. He brings close to 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and technology product development to the company as it prepares for the next stage of its growth. Mr. Klein was also appointed to the company’s board of directors.

Online Technologies, founded in 1994 as one of the first Internet Service Providers in Michigan, has evolved into the region’s premier colocation data center company. Since 2003, the company has expanded from 1000 square feet to over 40,000 square feet of data center space in southeast Michigan.

Mike Klein, a serial entrepreneur, began his career at Motorola and Rockwell, before founding his first software company fifteen years ago, and has lead several companies since then. He joins Yan Ness and Bob Palmerton on the executive team at Online Technologies to build the platform for the continued growth of the company.

“Online Technologies has grown 30 to 40% a year over the last five years. Maintaining this level of growth for the next 5 years requires us to continue to build an experienced management team” said Yan Ness, CEO of Online Technologies. “I’ve known Mike for a number of years, and I’ve seen the way he works. He brings the experiences and skills we need to scale Online Technologies to the next level. Having Mike on board will ensure the company can continue to achieve it’s growth goals.”

“Online Technologies has an impressive track record” said Klein. “They are the leading colocation data center company in southeast Michigan, playing in a rapidly growing market, with a strong customer base and solid of growth over the last 5 years. It’s exciting to join the team and to be able to play a role in one of Michigan’s fast growing technology companies.”

With three data centers across southeast Michigan, Online Technologies provides highly secure, always-on computing operations for its clients. The company delivers a full range of data center solutions including colocation, dedicated servers, and managed services for small and mid-sized businesses that need professional data centers without the expense of building and maintaining their own IT infrastructure.

For more information please contact Online Technologies Corporation at (734) 213-2020 or email at press@onlinetech.net.

Online Technologies Corporation (www.onlinetech.com), is Michigan’s Fort Knox for computing and data. Our secure, highly reliable data centers provide the infrastructure to ensure our clients’ computers are always on; their data is always safe, and they are always connected to the Internet.

What's New | Online Technologies

Why Chose Colocation with Online Technologies?

White Pines Selects Online Technologies Corporation

Metromode Article Features Online Technologies

See Also

Online Technologies Announces New Customer Portal

High Availability Rack Design

Online Technologies Opens New Michigan Data Center

See Also

New Blog on Dedicated and Virtual Servers

New Michigan Data Center

Managed Data Center Services

High Availability & Disaster Recovery

Online Technologies Adds New President to Its Executive Team

See Also